Day 4 - Isle of Skye
The days need more than 24 hours. Or I need to not be so addicted to the story of Jamie & Claire *sigh* Anyway, here is the next round of photos. I will always remember day 4 as the most perfect day of this vacation and the photos don't do the day justice at all. Some sights and views and feelings just can't be captured with a camera. I will still remember it.
We started with driving out to the most western point of the Isle of Skye. Neist Point Lighthouse. It's not in operation anymore and it's not much to look at in the sense of picturesque lighthouses, which disappointed me a wee bit. [Notice, that this is the first time I use 'wee' in my Scotland posts? Why didn't I use it before? *wonders*] I just have a thing for lighthouses, if you haven't known that yet.
So this was the path to the lighthouse, we started in the right corner of this picture...
... and it was a long long path...
We hoped to maybe see some dolphins or seals, which show up at the coast, but we weren't lucky. We've seen these strange kind of stone sculptures at an earlier stop already, but there were just so many at this place. They don't have meaning, it's not an old tradition for anything, just what people obviously do, when there are a lot of rocks and stones lying around. Pile them on top of each other...
... so of course I had to do that for myself as well. I didn't dare to stack more than a few tiny ones. Because it's not that easy to not have them collapse.
We drove all along the northwest coast of Skye until we reach the northern region, called Trotternish.
I have to admit I need some imagination to see a "kilt" in this cliff. But it's called "Kilt Rock" and it pretty famous. So here is the photo.
The view on the other side of the cliff was more interesting to me. The island Rona and behind that the hills of the mainland.
Yet another waterfall - tiny, but beautiful in it's own way - on the way back to Portree.
A few of us decided to do a boat trip in the evening in the hope to see some seals and dolphins and sea-eagles. And even if no animals were to show up, we still would have get a different view of Portree and the harbour and the estuary. We were provided with binoculars and went wild life spotting. There wasn't supposed to be anything in these caves though...
A bit further our guide showed us the nest of sea-eagle, with the (Mama?) eagle in it guarding it, because they had young ones up their. We tried to lure him/her down with fish, but neither one of the eagle parents showed up at the water surface. Further our we came across a lazy seal on the rocks. This (and the following) is a detail of the photo I took. My zoom just wasn't good enough, so it was a very good thing we have gotten the binoculars.
We went on for a while and waited a bit, because there obviously have been dolphins around this part around noon. But we didn't see any and turned back, when someone on our boat started to yell. "Fins, there are fins!" And there were... at least three, maybe even four or five.
It was such a fantastic experience to watch them swim around and jump and play, well it looked like they played at least. And it was such a fantastic end to such a wonderful day. Most perfect day of this vacation.
We started with driving out to the most western point of the Isle of Skye. Neist Point Lighthouse. It's not in operation anymore and it's not much to look at in the sense of picturesque lighthouses, which disappointed me a wee bit. [Notice, that this is the first time I use 'wee' in my Scotland posts? Why didn't I use it before? *wonders*] I just have a thing for lighthouses, if you haven't known that yet.
So this was the path to the lighthouse, we started in the right corner of this picture...
... and it was a long long path...
We hoped to maybe see some dolphins or seals, which show up at the coast, but we weren't lucky. We've seen these strange kind of stone sculptures at an earlier stop already, but there were just so many at this place. They don't have meaning, it's not an old tradition for anything, just what people obviously do, when there are a lot of rocks and stones lying around. Pile them on top of each other...
... so of course I had to do that for myself as well. I didn't dare to stack more than a few tiny ones. Because it's not that easy to not have them collapse.
We drove all along the northwest coast of Skye until we reach the northern region, called Trotternish.
I have to admit I need some imagination to see a "kilt" in this cliff. But it's called "Kilt Rock" and it pretty famous. So here is the photo.
The view on the other side of the cliff was more interesting to me. The island Rona and behind that the hills of the mainland.
Yet another waterfall - tiny, but beautiful in it's own way - on the way back to Portree.
A few of us decided to do a boat trip in the evening in the hope to see some seals and dolphins and sea-eagles. And even if no animals were to show up, we still would have get a different view of Portree and the harbour and the estuary. We were provided with binoculars and went wild life spotting. There wasn't supposed to be anything in these caves though...
A bit further our guide showed us the nest of sea-eagle, with the (Mama?) eagle in it guarding it, because they had young ones up their. We tried to lure him/her down with fish, but neither one of the eagle parents showed up at the water surface. Further our we came across a lazy seal on the rocks. This (and the following) is a detail of the photo I took. My zoom just wasn't good enough, so it was a very good thing we have gotten the binoculars.
We went on for a while and waited a bit, because there obviously have been dolphins around this part around noon. But we didn't see any and turned back, when someone on our boat started to yell. "Fins, there are fins!" And there were... at least three, maybe even four or five.
It was such a fantastic experience to watch them swim around and jump and play, well it looked like they played at least. And it was such a fantastic end to such a wonderful day. Most perfect day of this vacation.